Last week I was invited along to a Lindt “masterclass” at The Dorchester hotel in London. Having loved Lindt’s previous event, a meal inspired by their Excellence range, I jumped at the chance, particularly as this event promised the opportunity to go hands on and make our own Lindt chocolate creations.

This was a PR event, designed to promote Lindt’s “Creation” range of filled bars which come in four new flavours – hazelnut, orange, caramel and vanilla almond. We were given the opportunity to come up with our own flavour combinations, from an assortment of ten different ingredients.

There were bowls filled with dry ingredients like orange, caramel pieces, almond, biscuit, nougat, cranberry and more. We could mix and match and use as many different flavours as we wanted, then choose a ganache base – either hazelnut or white chocolate.

Deciding which flavours to use was tough. Using dry ingredients and a ganache base means you’re much more limited than the actual Lindt Creation range, but it was still no easy task.

We had been given chocolate bar moulds, which had been pre-filled with milk chocolate, and I really wanted something to cut through the sweetness. The obvious choice was the cranberry pieces, so that’s where I started. But I couldn’t just have cranberry, so I added nougat and crunchy caramel pieces to give my bar a bit of texture.

The cranberry pieces were a bit big to be piped into the mould, so I put them in first while I mixed up the caramel & nougat with the ganache.

Then, with a little help from Stefan, the Lindt chocolatier, I poured the ganache into a piping bag and piped it on top. Everything was going great until the last couple of squares where I just added a little too much. Luckily, there was still room for a layer of chocolate on top to complete the bar, so I wasn’t too worried.

And that, unfortunately, was the end of our masterclass. We labelled up our creations, and the Lindt people took them away to set before adding the final layer of milk chocolate themselves. It was a little frustrating not to get the chance to actually work with the chocolate at this event, but still fun.

A couple of days later, a courier knocked on my door with a box containing my finished bar. I’m pretty happy with the way it came out. It’s quite sweet of course, but it looks great and it’s really rather tasty.

Overall, a fun event and a great way to promote the Lindt range. I would have loved for it to be a little more involved and to have had the chance to have worked with the chocolate more, so I’m really hoping there will be an opportunity to do that in the future.

Competition

Update: This competition is now closed.

In the mean time, if you want to try the new Lindt Creation range for yourself, here’s your chance. Leave a comment on this post telling us what flavour combination you would like to see in a Lindt Creation bar, and we’ll pick our favourite to receive one of each of the new bars and a rather cute Lindt USB stick!

Make sure you use an email address that works when leaving a comment so we can get in touch with the winner. Entries close at 8pm on Friday 13th July. One entry per person, UK residents only.

I would love to see an amaretti and blueberry bar! I made a cheesecake recently with that combination and it was fantastic. I imagine it would especially work well with the creaminess of the Lindt chocolate.

Double Millionaires Shortcake!
(If putting into a mould)
A brush of caramel, then a layer of the thinnest shortcake, then caramel, then another of shortcake and caramel again, all surrounded by lovely lindt chocolate!

For me, I’d like something a little different. The sweetness, like you mentioned, needs breaking up a bit, so I’d go for a Lemon Zest filling, with a Salted Caramel base (like a biscuit base, but crunchy caramel instead).

I love Lindt too, my favourite is the dark Orange, so moreish.
I would like to have an actual rich dark pink chocolate, that taste of strawberries with a dark rich crunchy nibbly bits of chocolate inside.